Data browsing is a common form of information review. While conducting research in one text, an individual may come across a reference to another text, article or other source of information, which appears pertinent to the task at hand. The individual then retrieves the referenced text to review, while saving his place in the original text. While reviewing the referenced text, the individual can then repeat the process or return to the original text. In the traditional world of physical books and libraries, this data browsing process is labor intensive and time consuming.
With the development of computer networks and linked electronic data, data browsing has become simpler, faster and more effective. Linked data includes additional information that references a location of another data file or data object. By selecting a particular piece of linked data, such as by pointing to it with a cursor and pressing a button, a user of a data browsing system causes the referenced data file or data object to be retrieved and presented to the user. While the concept of linked data is applicable to many types of data retrieval systems, the most common application today is on the Internet and the World Wide Web.
The Internet is a computer network made up of nodes spanning the entire globe. A node can be a multi-purpose computer, a computer network, or any machine capable of communicating using Internet Protocol, such as routers, bridges and dumb terminals. Host computers or networks of computers on the Internet allow easy access to electronic services and information. Hosts can be sponsored by a wide range of entities including, for example, universities, government organizations, commercial enterprises and individuals.
Internet information and services are made available to the public through servers running on Internet hosts. Although a server is, strictly speaking, the software that resides on a host, an Internet host is also commonly referred to as a server because it performs this function. An individual using a computer connected to the Internet can access a very large amount of information by running client software, such as web browsing software, which requests data from the large number of servers connected to the Internet.
The World Wide Web is based on the combination of a standardized hypertext script language for defining the semantic value of data, such as Hypertext Markup Language (“HTML”) or a particular breed of Extensible Markup Language (“XML”), and a hypertext transfer protocol, such as “HTTP”. HTTP is designed to run primarily over the Transport Control Protocol (TCP), which is one of many transport layer protocols designed for use with the Internet Protocol (IP). HTTP uses the standard Internet setup, where a server issues the data and a client displays or processes the data using a web browser. This data can be in many forms including text, pictures, sound and software. Because the Web uses hypertext (information that defines the semantic value of data with which it is associated), it is very easy to create linked data on the Web. For example, using HTML, a link is typically created using the “href” attribute of the “a” element to identify a resource, using a Uniform Resource Identifier (“URI”), or a Uniform Resource Locator (“URL”), which is a particular type of URI. When such links are associated with text, or some other grouping of data, a user simply selects the text to cause the resource to be retrieved.
Through the use of these links, the Web provides ready access to information on the Internet, allowing a user to navigate Internet resources intuitively, using a graphical user interface, without specific knowledge of IP addresses and other specialized information. The Web comprises millions of data files, frequently referred to as “web pages”, connected by links. These web pages can be downloaded and displayed on a user's computer. Hosts running web servers provide these web pages.
Web server software is relatively simple and available on a wide range of computer platforms, including standard personal computers. Equally available is web browser software, which is used to request and display web pages and other types of data files to users. Thus, the combination of the Internet, the World Wide Web, and web browsers has created the largest and most comprehensive data browsing system known to date.
FIG. 2 is an illustration depicting an exemplary user interface for data browsing using a prior art link activation control mechanism. Referring now to FIG. 2, a graphical user interface (GUI) presentation 200 is a window created by (or instance of) data browsing software, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer available from Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, Wash. The GUI presentation 200 is displaying a web page designated by the URL “http://www.msnbc.com/news/default.asp.”
This web page shows various stock symbols 204 and their pricing and trading information. Each stock symbol 204 is also a link to more detailed information regarding the stock. By left clicking on a stock symbol link 204, a user will cause the web browser to request the more detailed information and display it in the GUI presentation 200. If the user wishes to keep this instance of the web browser displaying the current page and retrieve the more detailed information about a particular stock in a new instance of the web browser, the user must first right click 208 a selected link.
When the user right clicks 208 a selected link, an options menu 212 appears on the display. Included within this options menu 212 is an “Open in New Window” option. The user then moves the cursor down to this option and left clicks it to open the selected link in a new instance of the web browser. Thus, in order to open a link in a new web browser instance, the user must take four separate actions: (1) move the cursor to the link, (2) right click the link (3) move the cursor to the option, and (4) left click the option.
Moreover, the new instance of the web browser is opened on top of the current instance. If the user wishes to compare detailed information side by side, as is common in data browsing and particularly so in the case of looking up stock information, the user must then manually resize the two instances of the web browser.
When the extra user actions required by the current data browsing technology are considered in the aggregate over many hundreds of hours of data browsing activity, they represent a significant amount of wasted time and energy.
In addition, when people browse the World Wide Web, they are often subjected to unpredictable behavior of links, as programmed by the author of a particular web site. For example, a user may click on one link that opens a web page in a separate instance of the browser, while another link may open a page within the same instance of the browser. Links that spawn new instances of a browser unexpectedly can be very frustrating for a user, especially when the user is on a system with limited resources for managing windows.
In conventional data browsing systems, the user typically has no way to know how a link will behave until after it is selected, and the user has no ability to specify a manner in which to retrieve data identified by a link without extraneous user actions. Thus, what is needed is a system and method to improve user control of the data browsing experience, thereby enabling more efficient data browsing.